Taste of Chicago officially opened Wednesday, and if you’ve brought up the food and music festival to a local, you may have heard a response involving the words “too” and “many” and “tourists.”
“I haven’t gone in probably 10 years, and there just isn’t anything appealing about it to me anymore,” Oak Park resident Pallav Vora, 36, told the Tribune this week. “I just associate it with extreme heat and large crowds of people in tank tops,” the Chicago-area attorney said, adding: “Out of all my friends and the people I know, I really don’t know anybody that attends the Taste of Chicago on a regular basis.”
But the clientele lining up for the five-day event in Grant Park might not be who you expect.
Last year, culinary classics and Chicago oddities were served to 1.6 million visitors — the majority, or 55 percent, of them Chicago residents, according to Taste of Chicago data.
Bronzeville resident Veronica Robinson, 75, who’s attended the fest for years and was there for opening day Wednesday, recalled how friends from all over used to come to Chicago to attend the event.
She and friend Jessie Hillard, both members of the Columbus Park Line Dancers, talked about how the festival has changed over the years. The variety is wider, the prices are higher and the vendors are fewer, they said.
Also: “I wasn’t a senior citizen when I started coming here!” Hillard said with a laugh.
Suburban residents accounted for 25 percent of last year’s Taste crowd, while the next largest group was out-of-staters — largely from neighboring Michigan and Indiana — who made up 15 percent of attendees. Beyond the city and suburbs, 4 percent of Tastegoers were residents of other Illinois towns. Just 1 percent were international visitors, according to the results of 406 surveys collected over three days at last year’s Taste by Blackstone Group, a market research firm.
Where visitors come from
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55%
Chicago residents
25%
Suburban residents
4%
Rest of Illinois
15%
U.S. outside Illinois
1%
International
Friends Mercedes Gutierrez and Elizabeth Zielinski, both 20-somethings from Elgin, grew up coming to the Taste with their families and were back for more this year.
“I tried a rattlesnake and rabbit sausage,” said Gutierrez as the two grabbed some shade. “Not every day you taste stuff like that.”
Nodding to her friend, Gutierrez said, “She’s a vegetarian.”
Carrie and Neil Johnson and their son, John, came from Pulaski, Tenn., to visit family in the Southwest Side neighborhood Mount Greenwood — but just as importantly to attend the Taste for the first time.
“We always read about it, and so we were like, all right, let’s go do that,” said Carrie.
The family had just tried some barbecue.
“We’re from Tennessee, and we’re barbecue snobs, and that was good,” she said.
And the crowd itself was as diverse as the 70 eateries at the event. Almost half of attendees identified as black or African-American, the data shows, while white visitors made up 29 percent of attendees, and 24 percent of visitors identified as Latino. Only 3 percent of visitors identified as Asian/Pacific Islander.
Race/ethnicity of visitors
Values add up to more than 100 because some respondents chose multiple categories.
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Black
45%
White
29%
Hispanic
24%
Asian
3%
Other
2%
Black
45%
White
29%
Hispanic
24%
Asian
3%
Other
2%
Black
45%
White
29%
Hispanic
24%
Asian
3%
Other
2%
The annual free-entry food festival began in 1980 during then-Mayor Jane Byrne’s administration as a one-day event on the Fourth of July. After a move to Grant Park and a year off, the festival resumed in 1984 and expanded live entertainment in 1985. By 1988, the Taste grew to 10 days and by 1999 there was record attendance of 3.68 million visitors. Safety issues dogged the fest in following years as shootings near the event made headlines. Still, about 2.35 million people visited the Taste in 2011 — nearly one million more than last year.
The city reduced the festival to five days in 2013 after a $1.3 million loss the previous year.
On Wednesday, South Shore resident Cynthia Turner was happy to be back at the Taste after a long hiatus caused by surgeries that made walking difficult.
“I walked all this way, and I only sat down to eat,” Turner, 56, said, seated at a picnic table with friend and Hyde Park resident Elee Welch.
Welch, 78, brought her great-grandkids to this year’s Taste.
One of them turned to her with a smile and said, “Next, I’m going to get cheesecake.”
“It’s all about the people,” said Turner. “It’s about the fun you make.”
Source: Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, City of Chicago
On Twitter @morgreene and @KyleBentle
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